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Digital Terrain Model and 2D Viewing service 

A 2D viewing service has been developed for viewing bathymetric grids and digital terrain models (DTM). It enables the visualisation of pilot DTM products produced by the Geo-Seas project. This service is Web Map Service (WMS) compliant. It is built using the open source THREDDS Data Server and ncWMS software.

The pilot DTM products are stored in the pre-existing CARAIBES netCDF data format. This netCDF file is generated through data gridding procedures developed in Geo-Seas using open source Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) scripts or the CARAIBES software of IFREMER. The use of CARAIBES netCDF data format is an interim situation because further work is underway to formulate improvements to the netCDF format for bathymetric grids. Further work includes interoperability with the IHO S100 and INSPIRE standards, and implementing common vocabularies using the netCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Convention. The harmonisation of the netCDF formats for bathymetric grids is fundamental for ensuring future interoperability.

However, the pre-existing CARAIBES netCDF data format is not directly compatible with the THREDDS WMS server. THREDDS WMS requires netCDF which complies with the CF convention. Therefore, a data transformation tool was required to transform the CARAIBES netCDF format into a CF compliant netCDF format. This transformation tool was developed in Java. This CF compliant netCDF format is used by the THREDDS Data Server and ncWMS for the purposes of delivering the 2D viewing service.

Open the Geo-Seas THREDDS Data Server
Open the Geo-Seas ncWMS Godiva2 viewer